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About this project

About "Lunatics"

Lunatics is a story
about the first permanent settlement off of the Earth, in a tiny colony
on the Moon near Sinus Iridium. Politics are inevitable, physics is
implacable, and the colonists are indomitable fanatics. After all,
normal people don't really colonize new worlds, do they?

In the background here is a moving animatic of the type we will be producing for the rewards on this Kickstarter, created by animator Timothée Giet as well as some sound production work by Terry Hancock. (The foreground gopher is a small example of the 3D animation we'll be doing later on).

About the Pilot Episode "No Children in Space"

What's the difference between an "outpost" or a "base" and a
"settlement"? In simplest terms, it's that there are children there.
Without children or the capacity raise them, a colony has no long-term
existence. It might be a place that people stay for awhile, but it's not
a place people live, it's not a place you can be from.

Since
our series is about settlement (and often the conflict between the
personal goals of settlers, versus the scientific or political goals of
other types of people in space), it makes the most sense to start with
the the first child to arrive at the colony.

Hiromi and Rob
Lerner had planned to have their first child on the Moon, but with
budget cuts and setbacks and the biological clock ticking, they had
their daughter Georgiana on Earth. Now she's seven years old. That's a
very awkward age to get to the Moon.

Standard equipment won't fit
a seven-year-old girl, and the International Space Foundation had to
engage in this very symbolic mission of designing new equipment
appropriate for children: including a modified acceleration couch to fit
her height and weight, yet fit in a standard Soyuz-SF capsule and a
spacesuit that can be used for intra-vehicular and extra-vehicular
activity if needed. And of course, Georgiana had to be present in all of
the training.

Audio performance featuring voice actors Karrie Shirou (Hiromi), Ariel Hancock (Georgiana), Sergei Oleinik (Maj. Sergei Titov), and Veronika Kurshinskaya (Here playing the Russian launch controller, though she will play Anya in the series). The visual is a "blocking animatic" which is part of our workflow for making 3D animation in which I'm setting camera positions and movements.

Now
she's ready, and the pilot episode follows her on this very unique and
historic flight to the Moon as Georgiana becomes not only the first
child on the Moon, but also the youngest person to ever fly into space.

"No
Children in Space" was originally conceived as a dialog-light story,
focused more on action, imagery, and sound. It follows a number of
themes interlocked with the purposes of the series. It introduces
on-going story conflicts. It sets up a lot of the premises on which the
rest of the series is based.

Early animatic ("sketchy-matic") of a shot near the opening
of "No Children in Space". The voice-actors will be working over an animatic of similar "sketchy" quality to this. They'll be sketched by director Terry Hancock, with inserted elements like this plan view of the train.

Visually, it's a "voyage from
the past into the future", starting with train travel (19th century
technoloy); passing through early-20th century gas-powered cars and
buses; to the late-20th century Soyuz launch vehicle; to the early 21st
century space station; and on to the mid-21st century "Lunar
Transportation System" (LTS), a kind of lunar analogue to the US Space
Shuttle which serves as the primary link for supplies and travel to the
Moon in the 2040-era world of Lunatics.

Voice Production and Animatic

This Kickstarter is intended to fund the production of the voice recording and sound production for the Lunatics pilot episode "No Children in Space" along with an animatic to accompany it. This is the next step in our production process -- we just need to be able to guarantee the payments to the voice actors and our animatic artist.

An "animatic" is a quickly-animated version of a story, based on storyboards and some other directing notes. It is not fully animated (no lip-sync, no finer body motions, no walk-cycles, etc), but has just enough information to convey what the final shot will look like. It is normally used as an intermediate step in producing an animated or live-action film, and that's exactly how we hope to use it in the future.

When produced as an end-product, this kind of animation is sometimes called a "motion comic", as it resembles a comic-art presentation of the story except that some of the elements move (some motion comics use more comic-book-like layouts, but in fact, our production will really be an animatic, so it will use cinematic layout styles).

This is an incremental step in producing the pilot episode for Lunatics. We have already completed a successful Kickstart to fund pre-production work, especially the character design, which we are just finishing our reward deliveries on. We had an unsuccessful Kickstarter attempting to fund the entire pilot episode production in one go (the "frontal assault", you might say), so we are now proceeding with a more incremental, lower-risk approach.

This is a much smaller step, but in terms of our production schedule, funding this Kickstart will keep us pretty much right on our original schedule. The main difference is that we will have to run a later campaign to fund the 3D animation production of the episode (so we are not promising that at this time and it's not required for any of the rewards we are offering).

Voice Cast

We held online auditions in June and early
July for voice actors, and I have to admit I was surprised at the number
and quality of the auditions we received. Apparently a free-culture
project like ours can be taken seriously by professional actors.

So far we have confirmed cast for the seven principal characters who will appear in the pilot (in alphabetical order!):

Paul Birchard (playing Joshua Farmer and Allen Emerson)

Paul Birchard is a character actor with considerable experience in Hollywood and in UK television. He has also shown a lot of enthusiasm for our free-culture project and has been a great resource for the project since well before we started voice auditions. His strong audition performance showed an excellent grasp of both the folksy and nerdy sides of Joshua Farmer's character.

Birchard's credits include some high-profile Hollywood movies like "The Dark Knight" as well as a number of television performances in both comic and dramatic roles. This year he has been filming for "Air Force One is Down" a television adaptation of the novel by Alistair Maclean.

Ariel Hancock (Playing Georgiana Lerner)

Ariel Hancock is the daughter of series creators Rosalyn Hunter and Terry Hancock (so I can't pretend not to be a little biased here, sorry!). This ameliorates some of the legal issues surrounding child actors as well as making the remote collaboration problem much simpler (it's going to be much easier to couch my own daughter in the room with her than to work with a child actor remotely, even if they are very talented).

That said, she also did very well on the auditions (as you can hear in the video). We did audition a couple of adult actresses to play the role, but although they were very talented, we wanted a more authentic sound for Georgiana.

Veronika Kurshinskaya (playing Anya Titova Farmer)

A native of Yaroslavl, Russia, Veronika Kurshinskaya has been living in Los Angeles, California since 2008. Her Russian is of course thoroughly authentic and she speaks English with the high level of proficiency needed for this demanding part. In her audition performance, she showed considerable subtlety and just the right amount of humor. I can't wait to see what she'll do with the real part.

Kurshinskaya has been in a number of film, television, and online productions since her move to LA, most notably her principal role in the independent drama "Speak Now!" (2011), directed by Petra Haffter. She also appeared in her own one-woman-show "Maria Callas" at the Matrix Theatre in Hollywood, which she wrote as a thesis project.

Sergei Oleinik (playing Cosmonaut Pilot Maj. Sergei Titov)

Guest starring in the pilot episode is Sergei Oleinik, who will be playing the cosmonaut pilot who takes Hiromi and Georgiana into space aboard a Soyuz spacecraft, and then also serves his rotation flying the Lunar Transportation System moon shuttle to the Moon. Sergei has a special connection to the colonists, because he is Anya Titova's brother. This part requires a high level of proficiency in both Russian and English, which makes it even more challenging. Also, our "Sergei" needs to sound good next to "Anya" since they are supposed to be siblings.

Oleinik is an experienced voice-over artist based in Moscow. We liked both his enthusiasm for this part and his audition performance. I hope we can get him back for guest performances in the future as well.

Lex Quarterman (playing Tim Farmer)

To be honest, Lex Quarterman was not the voice we originally imagined for Tim (Anya and Josh's son). But he is an incredible stroke of luck for this project! His performance as Tim had both of us practically rolling on the floor laughing. He also, amazingly enough, is fluent in Russian, having spent a good part of his childhood in the Ukraine. This opens up new dramatic possibilities for us that we really had not dared to hope for previously.

William Roberts (playing Rob Lerner)

Rob Lerner is a difficult part. This is a guy who is amazingly charismatic. He had to be convincing enough to organize the support for this Moon colony. But he does have just a tinge of the fanatic about him (without going overboard). An experienced character actor in both voice and on-screen roles, William Roberts sent us a fantastically compelling audition for Rob -- winning out over a lot of competition.

Raised in Oregon and Northern California, Roberts has been living in the UK since 1969 and has been in numerous film and television roles, including a role in the film "Cold Mountain" and a voice role in "Balto".

Karrie Shirou (playing Hiromi Aoki Lerner)

Hiromi is another challenging part. As a wife and mother, she could easily fall into a cliche. But Hiromi is the heart and soul of the colony and she is actually an incredibly self-motivated and canny woman. She's also fully bilingual in English and Japanese (but, actually being born in America, she really shouldn't have any Japanese accent in English). That's a hard set of requirements to meet, and we were afraid it might be impossible. But Karrie Shirou is an ideal fit for the part. She's even from Torrance, California, just like the character bio says for Hiromi.

Shirou describes herself as "a cosplayer, voice actress, performer, writer, gamer, and mega-nerd". She has worked in promotional campaigns for a number of US anime import/translation studios. Karrie has also performed as a singer with USA Musume, a Hello! Project cover group since 2002.

I honestly can't believe our luck in the casting for this production, and it would be an incredible shame if we somehow missed the opportunity to hear these very talented actors in "Lunatics".

Although "Lunatics" is an animated film, the acting will be very naturalistic -- more along the lines of a Disney or Studio Ghibli film than like typical "cartoon voices". This is more challenging than most character voice acting, because more naturalistic voices means less room for error (either over- or under-acting). This is every bit as challenging as a live-action performance, and with "Lunatics" we have the added dimension of the knife-edge between drama and comedy that characterizes most of the dialog. It's also an ensemble story, with none of the characters particularly "starring", so we need strong performances from all of these principals. And we have been blessed with the kind of talent who can do that!

Also, I think it has to be said that these folks are working for peanuts on this project. I am very, very grateful to all of them for their enthusiasm and willingness to accommodate our very low-budget project. In the base budget listed here, we are paying each of these principals just $200.00 to offset expenses (we can't actually pay for meals and studio space since we are working remotely). I'd like to pay them more than that, and if we get past our minimum goal we will give priority to paying them up to something near union rates (which for a broadcast TV performance similar to ours, would be just shy of $800 per recording day, based on SAG/AFTRA documents I've read).

Of course, we also have an excellent group of supporting actors, both in terms of their talent and their enthusiasm for the project. I will be posting more about them as we finish confirming our arrangements with them.

Animation - Timothée Giet

An experienced comic artist and 2D animator, Timothée Giet applied for the internship program we originally announced, which was mostly focused on 3D modeling, but also included some 2D animation skills. He is a particular expert with Synfig Studio and Krita, which he has used to create a number of elements for our production.

You've already seen some of his work in the "Lubo" video at the top of this page -- he created the Soyuz rollout animation you see in the background of this shot (Lubo himself is 3D animated work by Cosmin Planchon, who we hope will be back on the project next spring if and when we can fund the full 3D animated production in the Spring). He also created console animations that will eventually go into the 3D production and painted the Earth backdrop below, intended for the teaser trailer.

Earth limb painting by Timothée Giet who will be creating the animatics.

Budget - Where the Money will Go

We did make a previous attempt to fund the production of the pilot episode all in one go, but we're still a fairly low-profile project and we probably seem pretty risky for a full 3D production at this point. However, the next logical step in our production is simple stuff we are extremely confident about, so I hope you will have enough confidence in us to support it.

We are paying the principal voice actors just $200.00 for what will probably be either one or two Saturday recording sessions. This accounts for $1400 of our production budget.

We have budgeted just two months of half-time work for Timothée Giet to do the animatics, this amounts to $1600 total for essentially animating the entire episode, albeit in a fairly simple way.

We're also budgeting an additional $500.00 to cover equipment costs, including a portable USB microphone to be used for foley sound recording, and also as a potential "floater" to help recording supporting voice actors' performances if they don't have adequate equipment of their own. This will also pay for an inexpensive set of studio-quality monitoring headphones so we can get the mixing quality right over the whole spectrum. Of course, the software is all free software and does not cost us any money.

This gives a total minimum production budget for the animatic and voice performance phase of just $3500. To this we must add the overhead costs for producing and shipping the rewards, and of course the fees charged by Kickstarter and Amazon Payments for hosting the campaign and processing your pledges.

We've noticed a tendency for backers on Lunatics to be more interested in the "prestige" types of rewards -- which are mostly about showing your support rather than about getting stuff. As such, we have structured the rewards on this Kickstarter to be inexpensive to produce in small quantities so we can have a lower overhead cost. I'm estimating just 10% for production costs of the rewards on this Kickstarter, which covers the printing costs as well as shipping and handling.

Of course, Kickstarter and Amazon Payments together cost us about 10%.

Adding both of these overhead costs to the production budget yields our $4235.00 Kickstarter goal.

As you can see, there is really no fat in this budget! Any additional overheads will have to be paid out of our pockets.

At this minimum, Rosalyn Hunter and Terry Hancock will have to work for free. This does mean we will have to allow some extra time for the other projects we are doing to pay our bills, but we believe we can manage this for the short time it will take to produce this voiced animatic. The supporting actors will also be working for free, and we will not be paying any of the musical or graphic artists whose free-licensed work we are using. Hopefully, we will be able to pay them something from creator endorsed sales later on.

About "Lunatics" Creators - Rosalyn Hunter and Terry Hancock

Rosalyn Hunter
has been writing science fiction for many years, although she has only
recently started publishing her work. She has particular talents for
character development and tightly-written dialog. She is also a botanist
with an interest in closed-systems ecology and space agriculture and a
Master's degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of
Arizona.

Terry Hancock
has been an ardent reader of science fiction and a film buff for
decades. He studied both Aerospace Engineering and Film at the University of Texas
in the 1980s, before ultimately graduating with a degree in Astronomy.
He worked in several professional positions as a research assistant or
technician in Astronomy before gradually moving into computer work and a
freelance career writing about free software and studying free culture.
Since 2005, he's been a frequent columnist for Free Software Magazine.

Rosalyn
and Terry have been developing the concept for Lunatics since the early
2000s, and have been actively working on series development, stylistic
considerations, world-building, and scripts since 2009.

The Story...

"Somebody Has to Be Crazy Enough to Go First!"

The concept for Lunatics
came to Rosalyn Hunter and I some years ago, as a result of a
discussion about what a space settlement would really be like,
considering that it would be settled by the same kind of people who we
knew as space advocates then. The truth is, the first settlers will be
fanatics about space, because no one else would be able to get that
opportunity. And this is something we felt was missing from most of the
science-fiction narratives on the subject.

We got kind of
tired of "angsty everyman" characters "thrust into the thankless task of
settling a new world" or some such nonsense. This just isn't true to
the character of the people who'd actually wind up in that situation.
They will have to be extraordinary people, not just in ability, but also
in outlook. It takes an incredible optimist to take on a task like this
seriously. And we knew those people. We'd met them in conferences, and
to one degree or another, we'd been those people. So we could really get
inside their heads, and that was the beginning of the characters -- and
this is a story that starts with the characters.

Half-meter scale images like this one from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's narrow-angle camera have allowed us to get very accurate information about the region where "Lunatics" is set!

The more we talked about these characters, the funnier the idea
became, and we quickly worked our way towards a set of caricatures of
"crazy space advocates". After a while, the characters mellowed a little
as we added more depth to them. By now they're much more believable and
engaging.

Then we added to that a realism of setting based on
much more up-to-date ideas about settling on the Moon. There are real
problems with making a habitable settlement on Luna, and we didn't want
to magic them away by ignoring them and pretending that it would all
"work out somehow". That's okay in some science fiction, especially in
the far future, because we really don't know how "transporters" or "warp
drive" would work (or if it would work), but what's the excuse here? We
know how to solve the problems for a Moon settlement -- or at least we
have a pretty good idea, so ignoring them would just be a cop out.

We
also wanted to challenge some of the orthodoxy on space settlement,
which we've often found to be lacking. There's a lot of people in the
space community who are trying to fool themselves about their motives,
and then trying to fool the public into following them for those false
motives. I don't think it works. Telling people you're going to settle
the Moon "for the money" is just absurd. There are far easier ways to
make money that don't involve going into space at all. And I think it's
valuable to address the nature of the spiritual pull that space
development has for many of us in more honest terms -- to admit that
really, we're doing it "because it's there". There's a little bit
craziness there, and I want to embrace it.

LTS Lander (Plan-Starboard) by Terry Hancock

There are also a lot of human issues that just haven't been
addressed in prior science fiction about space settlement. Raising
children in space is going to be a particular challenge not only in
terms of time pressures and other basic parenting problems, but also in
terms of ethics. Even our pilot episode will raise some of the issues
that are likely to be raised about taking children out on this "greatest
adventure".

Because adventures, as you know, are very
dangerous. We've become a very risk-averse society over the decades --
are we ready to cope with the hazards of a frontier again?

Again,
we were a little tired of seeing rather tired cliches of what a Moon
settlement would look like -- especially designs that just didn't make
any real sense on the real Moon. Every time we found ourselves falling
back on cliche in developing the plot for Lunatics, we've challenged
ourselves with the question, "Well, what would really happen?"

And
the answer, though it sometimes took quite a bit of thinking to figure
it out, was always much more interesting than the cliche. Finally, for
some reason, space settlement and space exploration never seem to be a
satisfactory subject for Hollywood. Big-budget science fiction movies
about space can't seem to divorce themselves from the mythology of UFOs,
ancient aliens, and other such nonsense. I don't mind such fantasies in
fiction, but I think they detract from a story like ours. We don't need
"magic" of this kind to make our plots go -- we think there's plenty of
drama to be had in just living on a space frontier, and that's what we
want to write about.

Detailed floorplans of the ISF Colony have been created to support modeling the virtual sets (this shows the "courtyard" recreational area in the colony, surrounded by the living areas.

Modeling one of the several types of modules used in the ISF colony (Terry Hancock)

So, to some degree, Lunatics
will be "small cinema" about the drama and comedy of everyday life. In
that way, it's almost a "sitcom", although I hope you'll find it's a
little more than that. It's a story about confident, resourceful people
facing serious problems with a sense of humor; it's about the
fundamental dangers both of nature and of human nature; and it's about a
truly realistic view of space colonization and settlement.

Kick it Forward

You might notice from my profile that I'm already a bit of a Kickstarter junkie as a backer. I give particular deference to free culture works (things under Free Creative Commons licenses: CC0, CC By, or CC By-SA). So I'm happy to say I will spend 5% of post-release sales profits on Lunatics on other free-culture crowd-funded projects (it's a safe bet that I would anyway).

By the way, this does not mean 5% of the Kickstarter total from this campaign (i.e. it's not money from backers). In fact, 100% of this Kickstarter is going to expenses and commissions anyway, but the "Kick It Forward" concept is based on profits of sales after release. So that basically means that it's from profits on DVDs and ancillary "Creator Endorsed" merchandise when we start selling them -- we're promising to share some of that back with the community, which is very much in line with our project objectives.

FAQ

Even if we had succeeded at raising the money for the fully 3D animated version, the next step would still be to make an animatic with dialog voices. Whether to complete the sound production first or animate first would've been an option (we could've done them in parallel), but there's no real reason not to do the sound first.

We might have just gone with my "sketchy-matic" animatics instead of getting Tim Giet to do his much nicer versions. I decided to go with that for this project, because it will make a nicer intermediate product. But really, it's nice to have anyway, because my storyboard really are pretty sketchy.

What I'm hoping is that a 2D animatic with our best version of the sound mixing will be enough to draw people in to support the full animation project by the time we need to raise money for that.

So this is really just a matter of changing to a more incremental strategy for production. The goal is still the same. This may result in a delay in when we can deliver the 3D animated version, since we can't get the animators to start right away. And of course, we may lose some of the people who signed on and have to find others, depending on work schedules and so on.

Some of the rewards allow for options (for example, the sponsorships all let you opt out of getting the physical "WORKS" package). These details will be collected in a questionnaire we send out when we're getting ready to produce and ship rewards. This is also how we will get the correct mailing address, your T-shirt size, the name you want to appear in the credits, and other information needed to fulfill the reward.

Rewards

Pledge $1 or more

Notification of download availability for "Lunatics" production materials, voice recordings, and animatics.

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

Pledge $10 or more

10 backers

BACKER CREDIT: Listing in the credits on the downloadable video, the "No Children in Space" animatic download page on our project website, and in the credits on DVD copies of the animatic.

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

Pledge $17 or more

2 backers

FINGER PUPPETS: Set of 8 finger puppets of the colonists ready to cut-out, printed on cardstock. This fits in a letter envelope so we can send it to any address worldwide. Also includes BACKER CREDIT reward.

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

Pledge $19 or more

0 backers

POSTER (USA Addresses): 13" x 19" character line-up poster (the picture is similar to the one used to advertise this Kickstarter). This reward is available for shipping to USA addresses only (see the WORLD version if you are not in the USA). Also includes BACKER CREDIT reward.

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

Pledge $20 or more

3 backers

SOUNDTRACK ALBUM - DIGITAL: Early download access to composed soundtrack for the pilot episode as a downloadable ZIP file with FLAC audio, PNG format cover art, and PDF "liner notes" with credits, lyrics, and commentary by director Terry Hancock. Also includes BACKER CREDIT reward.

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

Pledge $25 or more

2 backers

POSTER (WORLD Addresses): 13" x 19" character line-up poster (the picture is similar to the one used to advertise this Kickstarter -- see the text for the actual poster layout). This reward is available for shipping to worldwide addresses (any place we can legally ship to). Also includes BACKER CREDIT reward.

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

Pledge $27 or more

5 backers

T-SHIRT (USA): T-shirt with the "Lunatics" silhouette graphic and the tagline "Somebody has to be crazy enough to go first!". Available for shipping to USA addresses only (see WORLD version if you are not in the USA). Also includes BACKER CREDIT reward.

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

Pledge $30 or more

0 backers

SOUNDTRACK ALBUM - CD-R: Soundtrack album duplicated onto CD-R disk in a jewel case with color-printed liner notes and cover art. Also includes BACKER CREDIT reward.

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

Pledge $35 or more

3 backers

ANIMATIC DOWNLOAD: Early access to HD video download of the movie with cover art (PNG) and liner notes (PDF), as well as the soundtrack and other production materials in a convenient single ZIP archive file. Also includes BACKER CREDIT reward.

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

Pledge $37 or more

4 backers

T-SHIRT (WORLD): T-shirt with the "Lunatics" silhouette graphic and the tagline "Somebody has to be crazy enough to go first!". Available for shipping to addresses worldwide. Also includes BACKER CREDIT reward.

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

Pledge $40 or more

0 backers

SIGNED DVD: Animatic performance on an M-Disc DVD, playable in standard DVD players. Will include the animatic and final voice-cast performance of the episode. A signed "Thank you" note from series creators Rosalyn Hunter and Terry Hancock. Also includes BACKER CREDIT reward.

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

Pledge $50 or more

7 backers

PREMIUM BACKER CREDIT: Special listing as a "Premium Backer". Includes a convenient digital download package with ISOs for the DVD edition of the animatic, the soundtrack CD, and ZIP file downloads of digital editions. (All deliveries on this reward are digital).

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

Pledge $51 or more

2 backers

ARTBOOK AND WRITERS' GUIDE (USA): This is the same book we are producing for our pre-production backers. If you missed out on our first Kickstart, you can get a copy now. Contains business plan, episode and series structure, character profiles and model sheets, diagrams and plans of spacecraft, in-universe historical information, the first two episode scripts, audition scripts, and the "Lunatics" short story "The Landing". Softcover 8.5"x11". 182 pages total, 9 in color. These are finished and will go out right after the Kickstarter if it succeeds. Shippiing to USA addresses only (see also WORLD version).

Estimated delivery:Sep 2012

You selected

Pledge $61 or more

1 backer

ARTBOOK AND WRITERS' GUIDE (WORLD): This is the same book we are producing for our pre-production backers. If you missed out on our first Kickstart, you can get a copy now. Contains business plan, episode and series structure, character profiles and model sheets, diagrams and plans of spacecraft, in-universe historical information, the first two episode scripts, audition scripts, and the "Lunatics" short story "The Landing". Softcover 8.5"x11". 182 pages total, 9 in color. These are finished and will go out right after the Kickstarter if it succeeds. Shippiing to any address worldwide that we can legally ship to.

Estimated delivery:Sep 2012

You selected

Pledge $100 or more

5 backers

THE WORKS (USA only): Includes all of the above rewards: ANIMATIC on DVD, SOUNDTRACK on CD-R, POSTER, FINGER PUPPETS, T-SHIRT, along with a signed thank you note from "Lunatics" creators Rosalyn Hunter and Terry Hancock. Also include access to all of the digital downloads and listing as a PREMIUM BACKER. This reward is available for shipping to USA addresses only (see WORLD version if you are not in the USA).

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

Pledge $110 or more

2 backers

THE WORKS (WORLD): Includes all of the above rewards: ANIMATIC on DVD, SOUNDTRACK on CD-R, POSTER, FINGER PUPPETS, T-SHIRT, along with a signed thank you note from "Lunatics" creators Rosalyn Hunter and Terry Hancock. Also include access to all of the digital downloads and listing as a PREMIUM BACKER. This reward is available for shipping to any place worldwide that we can legally ship to).

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

Pledge $150 or more

0 backers

THE WORKS PLUS THE ARTBOOK: By request, this is the "WORKS" package mentioned above (POSTER, FINGER PUPPETS, SOUNDTRACK, DVD, T-SHIRT), with the "Pre-Production Artbook and Writer's Guide" added to it. This book will also be included (unless you opt out of physical rewards on the questionnaire we send out) with any of the sponsorship awards ($200 or more).

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

Pledge $200 or more

2 backers

GOLD SPONSORSHIP: Listing as a "Gold Sponsor" in the credits for the Animatic online, on the download page on our project website, and in the credits file in the source data. Includes THE WORKS package (although you can opt out of the physical rewards if you'd prefer for your whole pledge to go into our production budget).

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

Pledge $500 or more

1 backer

PLATINUM SPONSORSHIP: Prominent listing as a "Platinum Sponsor" in the credits for the Animatic online, on the download page on our project website, and in the credits file in the source data. Includes THE WORKS package (although you can opt out of the physical rewards if you'd prefer for your whole pledge to go into our production budget).

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

You selected

Pledge $1,000 or more

0 backers
Limited (6 left of 6)

LOGO SPONSORSHIP: Sponsorship for your company, club, foundation, etc. You will have a prominent listing as a sponsor ahead of the individual sponsorship credits, and you may include a (monochrome) logo for the credits listing along with your organization's name and URL. This will be included in the credits in the animatic and on the download page for the animatic on our project site. You will also be listed as a sponsor for the animatics in the credits for later-stages of production for the pilot episode (assuming we get that far). Optionally includes up to 3 "THE WORKS" packages for your group (you can opt out of this or receive fewer if you'd rather we put the money straight into our production budget).

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

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Pledge $4,235 or more

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PRIMARY LOGO SPONSORSHIP: Fund the whole animatic project in one go! We'll fly your logo as a bumper in front of the animatic when it is released online (either provided by you, or animated by us based on your logo art), include your logo and name prominently on the animatic download page on our project website, and list your logo, organization name, and URL ahead of the end credits in the animatic release. We will also include a prominent mention of your sponsorship in the credits for later development stages of the pilot episode (if and when they are made). Optionally includes up to 10 "THE WORKS" packages for your group (you can opt out of this or receive fewer if you'd rather we put the money straight into our production budget).

Estimated delivery:Dec 2012

Funding period

Aug 15, 2012 - Sep 8, 2012
(23 days)

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